Using the location of baroque opera houses as a natural experiment, Falck et al. (2011) claim to document a positive causal effect of the supply of cultural goods on today’s regional distribution of talents. This paper raises serious doubts on the validity of the identification strategy...

This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

The flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe during and after World War II constitutes one of the largest forced population movements in history. We analyze the economic integration of these forced migrants and their off spring in West Germany. The empirical results suggest that even...

Using a matched employer-employee panel dataset for Germany, we analyze the external effects of education on individual wages. Following the basic framework of Moretti (2004), we allow spillover effects to occur both within a specific firm and a specific region rather than analyzing spillover...